Elsewhere:

• AP Rigs Poll for Obama .
• Krauthammer: When Will Islamic Nations Apologize To Us….  The thing about Charles is that he keeps asking questions.
• The president’s fuel from algae idea – “Lower Than Pond Scum”.  Wish I had thought of that line.
• I’m With Newt, Mostly on voter referendums on gay marriage.
• Koch fighting back against Obama smears.  The demonizer in chief is at work again.
• The end-Israel lobby.  No matter how you dress it up, that’s what it is.
• State Department quietly warning region on Syrian WMDs.
• Point by point rejoinder to The economic illiteracy of Timothy Geithner:

“That’s the kind of balance you need. Why is that the case? Because if you don’t try to generate more revenues through tax reform, if you don’t ask, you know, the most fortunate Americans to bear a slightly larger burden of the privilege of being an American, then you have to — the only way to achieve fiscal sustainability is through unacceptably deep cuts in benefits for middle class seniors, or unacceptably deep cuts in national security.”

In fact, Romney defended Bush’s motives:

And with regards to No Child Left Behind, the right answer there — President Bush stood up and said, you know what? The teachers unions don’t want school choice, I want school choice to see who’s succeeding and failing.

He was right to fight for that. There are things that should be changed in the law, but we have to stand up to the federal teachers unions and put the kids first and the unions behind.

It was Ron Paul, and then an audience question, which brought Santorum‘s uncomfortable response on NCLB:

Well, you know what? I supported No Child Left Behind. I supported it. It was the principal priority of President Bush to try to take on a failing education system and try to impose some sort of testing regime that would be able to quantify how well we’re doing with respect to education.

I have to admit, I voted for that. It was against the principles I believed in, but, you know, when you’re part of the team, sometimes you take one for the team, for the leader, and I made a mistake.

(BOOING) You know, politics is a team sport, folks. And sometimes you’ve got to rally together and do something. And in this case, you know, I thought testing was — and finding out how bad the problem was wasn’t a bad idea.

What was a bad idea was all the money that was put out there, and that, in fact, was a huge problem. I admit the mistake and I will not make that mistake again. You have someone who is committed.

Post-debate, Romney has mocked Santorum‘s “team player” line to attack Santorum‘s alleged strength, courage of conviction.

“Courage” was the one word Santorum used to describe himself at the end of the debate, even after acknowledging that he voted against principle on NCLB.

So don’t blame Romney for Santorum‘s problem, it was a self-inflicted wound.

Nonetheless, it is fascinating to watch Romney’s prior spirited embrace of NCLB in 2008, Mitt Romney Strongly Supported No Child Left Behind:

Who to blame? You know.

Via American Glob:

Are social media sites destined to always be the online equivalent of a seventh-grade dance? Men on one side, women on the other?

The numbers suggest that, instead, women will soon overrun the dance floor of social media sites — and what’s more, be the DJs, too.

Since 2008, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project’s Kathryn Zickuhr, women have led men in the use of social media sites. Women not only outnumber men on the sites (69 percent of women use social media, compared with 60 percent of men), they also spend more time on them. Women use social media sites to be, well, social, whereas, Zickuhr says, men are more task-oriented, using the sites to promote themselves and gather information.

I’m not buying the framework, which is a zero sum game.

There is no social media dance floor.  It’s more like a bunch of isolated dance floors which have their own character and audience.

I have no idea if these demographics of Legal Insurrection readers are accurate, but if true, you look pretty much like me demographically:

If women use Facebook more (I believe that), what do I care?  Mommy Bloggers, be they the “I love my kids, aren’t they special?” or “I hate my life” types, don’t get in my way.

I’ve even have come to accept the existence of cat bloggers, although I question the social utility.

They are not depriving me of my space.  I’m mostly not even aware they exist.

No man is an island? Maybe, but this blog is.

Update:

Only when the political pressure became too great did Obama speak out, and even then, the administration pursued the negotiaion without precondition path.  The result was that Iran never came to the table in any meaningful way.

There are indications that the same mistake is being made again, this time in Syria.

The Saudi Minister attending the Friends of Syria conference left because of what Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV described as the conference’s “inactivity“:

Saudi Arabia’s delegation walked out of a “Friends of Syria” meeting in Tunis on Friday over what it saw as the gathering’s “inactivity”, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said.  It said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal left the meeting after saying in a speech that focusing on humanitarian aid to Syria was “not enough”.

The Saudis later tried to downplay the walkout:

Asked about the report, an aide to the Saudi foreign minister told Reuters: “We left to attend bilateral meetings” on the sidelines of the “Friends of Syria” conference.

The Saudis are in favor of providing arms for the rebels, while the U.S. is taking a more passive posture, at least in public.

The website DEBKAFile suggests the Obama administration is holding back in the hope, once again, of luring Iran into nuclear talks.  With so much going on behind the scenes, and possibly covertly, it’s hard to assess the claim, but it makes perfect sense in light of the apparent push to lure Iran back to the table.

I guess we’ll see how it plays out in the next few days, but it’s looking more and more like Syria 2012 is Iran 2009.

But, um, even I didn’t accuse Mitt of acting like Occupy Wall Street:

“It’s absolutely laughable to have a liberal governor of Massachusetts say that I am not a conservative,” Santorum said, attacking Romney’s tax plan. “We have a candidate for president who is campaigning as an Occupy Wall Street adherent.”

Just a reminder.

This is Occupy Wall Street.  This is Mitt.

Got it?

But then it has now sort of morphed out of that. Once Obama found his compromise, it’s morphed out of that. It’s part of a more general conversation about contraception, and even tonight about culture when Rick Santorum got into what’s happening to families. And for a lot of women it sounds like four white guys who are out there telling them, “Here’s how we’re going to control your lives.”

What does being a “white guy” have to do with the contraception dispute?

Does Gergen think that if Herman Cain still were in the race and on stage that he would have taken a different position than the “four white guys.”

Let’s play role reversal.  Most Republicans and plenty of independents believe Obamacare is an attempt to control everyone’s lives.  Would Gergen dare say that Obama just “sounds like a black guy who is out there telling them, ‘Here’s how we’re going to control your lives.’”

And by the way David, not everyone appreciates you purporting to know what women want, particularly conservative women:

You know, it’s that smug cer­tainty that is imbued within Gergen’s atti­tu­di­nal hedo­nism as he speaks with no detectable irony for all women every­where about the elit­ism of the Repub­li­can candidates.  Quite a star­tling vision to behold….

Con­ser­v­a­tive women see four politi­cians who are strug­gling to artic­u­late the con­ser­v­a­tive mes­sage of self-reliance, laissez-faire cap­i­tal­ism and the right to self-determination which must be infused with moral clar­ity in order to func­tion in this world of despots who seek to con­trol every­thing from how much money you make, to what car you drive, to your caloric intake, to where you dare say the word “God,” to which med­ical ser­vices you receive.  We see four less than ideal can­di­dates who as yet can’t reflect the con­ser­v­a­tive long­ing to end the con­trol that gov­ern­ment already holds over our lives.

I really don’t get what our Repub­li­can can­di­dates find so dif­fi­cult to grasp.  The mes­sage is sim­ple.  Pay for your own damn birth con­trol…. What more do you want?  Free ship­ping and han­dling?

Has “white guy” simply become the proxy for everything with which an MSM commentator disagrees or cannot otherwise explain?

I know, asked and answered.

Algae is just alright with me,
Algae is just alright, oh yeah.
I don’t care what they may say,
Algae is just alright, oh yeah.

Via Kurt Schlichter:

Look at the speaker list of almost any of the activities, and it’s like a freak show of wilful denial, such as the “Pinkwashing” charges brought by anti-Israeli gay leftists who seem incapable of appreciating the irony that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where they would not be stoned to death or at least severely persecuted.

The pinkwashing charge exposes the true intent, which is the complete denial to Israel of anything good:

The pinkwashing allegation uncovers something deeply nefarious about the anti-Israel movement: Opposition to Israel is rarely limited to criticism of Israel as it relates to the conflict. Instead, it often becomes an all-out attempt to slander every facet of Israel’s existence and to claim that Israel’s real and laudable achievements are just an attempt to “cover up” the darker truth. Israel’s swift responses to the recent humanitarian crises in Turkey and Haiti were similarly dismissed by anti-Israel activists as an opportunity exploited by Israel to whitewash its record.

Here are some links relating to activities which start today:

• Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to Host Conference On the Extermination of Israel
• The return of the Israel Apartheid Week cult
• The Top 5 Fatal Flaws of the Israel Apartheid Analogy
• Students clash at Israel Apartheid Week

The good news, as I reported Thursday, is that support for Israel is at a historic high in the U.S. and there is a growing pro-Israel movement among American Christians on campus.‎

(h/t Hope Change in Tip Line)

Support Barry Hinckley.  With recent news of Whitehouse’s abysmal favorability rating, it’s doable.  It would be the shocker of 2012, in a place they are not expecting it.

Hinckley just released this web video on The Historic Ocassion of The Visit of The Honorable Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. to The Ocean State and Providence Plantations.

Via The Hill and h/t @SenatorForSale:

In case you forgot, this is Sheldon Whitehouse on the eve of the Senate passing Obamacare, and it’s no joke:

(added) When viewing the speech, particularly at the 8:00 mark, keep this in mind, Sheldon Whitehouse Voted to Defund The Troops in 2007.

Update:  During his trip to RI, Biden revealed that he had approached Whitehouse previously to be a possible U.S. Supreme Court nominee.  Unreal.

Why not? Once we make motive an element of a crime, it goes both ways, and all ways.

So a Jew can be guilty of an anti-Jewish hate crime, a black of an anti-black hate crime, and in this case in Boston, three lesbians of an anti-homosexual hate crime for calling a gay man names while beating him up.

Via The Boston Herald:

Three women identified by their lawyers as lesbians were arraigned yesterday on a hate crime charge for allegedly beating a gay man at the Forest Hills T station in an unusual case that experts say exposes the law’s flawed logic.

“My guess is that no sane jury would convict them under those circumstances, but what this really demonstrates is the idiocy of the hate-crime legislation,” said civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate. “If you beat someone up, you’re guilty of assault and battery of a human being. Period. The idea of trying to break down human beings into categories is doomed to failure.”

Prosecutors and the ACLU of Massachusetts said no matter the defendants’ sexual orientation, they can still face the crime of assault and battery with intent to intimidate, which carries up to a 10-year prison sentence, by using hateful language.

“Someone who is Jewish can be anti-Semitic,” said ACLU staff attorney Sarah Wunsch. “The mere fact that someone is a member of the same class doesn’t mean they could not be motivated by hatred for their very own group.”

This is the definition of hate crime in Massachusetts:

“Hate crime”, any criminal act coupled with overt actions motivated by bigotry and bias including, but not limited to, a threatened, attempted or completed overt act motivated at least in part by racial, religious, ethnic, handicap, gender or sexual orientation prejudice, or which otherwise deprives another person of his constitutional rights by threats, intimidation or coercion, or which seek to interfere with or disrupt a person’s exercise of constitutional rights through harassment or intimidation….

By the wording, it would seem that if a lesbian were prejudiced against gay men, and committed a crime against the person while acting on that prejudice, that would qualify.

Silvergate is an interesting guy.  He’s a co-founder of F.I.R.E. and an adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute.  He’s also right about how easy it is to end up with absurd results when the criminal law gets tangled in motives as opposed to acts.

It’s not an easy position to take because opposing hate crimes law opens one up to the false allegation of being in favor of the acts constituting the crimes.

But given two identical crimes, why should one victim be deemed more worthy of greater protection not based on the status of the victim (e.g. a child) but based on the motive of the perp?

On Long Island, NY (Waldbaum’s parking lot, Albertson).  And on a Prius!

Here in our society, we have a constitution that gives us many rights, specifically, First Amendment rights. It’s unfortunate that some people use the First Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don’t think that’s what our forefathers really intended. I think our forefathers intended that we use the First Amendment so that we can speak our mind, not to piss off other people and other cultures, which is what you did.

• The forces that would destroy Rick Santorum.  (h/t Dan Riehl)
• Homs, Syria.  1982.